Accessories

Making Your Fireplace Mantel a Focal Point

April 21, 2018

The fireplace is almost always a focal point in living room designs. However, when things warm up – there’s rarely a fire for your eyes to get lost in. This is where the mantel comes into play. Using the right combination of art and accent pieces, your mantel will become the focal point that draws the eye away from the empty cavern of a fireplace until next winter rolls around.

Here are inspiring ideas to style your fireplace mantel.

The mantel itself. If you are living in a standard home, rather than one you designed, odds are your mantel is blah. You can dress it up, using the suggestions below, or you might want to just swap it out altogether. The custom fireplace and mantel in this San Francisco living room hardly needs adornment. Or, if above-the-fireplace is the only option for mounting your television, consider using a unique piece of driftwood or other material to clearly divide the fireplace from the entertainment center.

Hang an art piece. The most traditional method for decorating a mantel is to hang a stunning art piece above it. The colors will draw the eye up, and you can flank it on either side with sconces, or set complementary accents on each side of the mantel, keeping the mid-portion of the mantel free so nothing competes with the art.

The space above the mantel is also a wonderful spot for an accent wall – or section of wall. If a solid color doesn’t appeal to you, consider using wall paper with a beautiful print.

Use mirrors. In lieu of a work of art, you can also search for just the right mirror. In many cases, the mirror itself is a work of art. There are several benefits to using a mirror. If you have a smaller living or bedroom space with a fireplace, the mirror will help to make the space seem larger. If you plan ahead of time, you can make sure that the mirror reflects something beautiful from the opposite side of the room, so that particular accent does double duty. If you have a gorgeous suspended light fixture, you can work with the mirror placement so that it reflects the light, which adds a nice twinkly bonus once the sun sets.

Draw the eye. The mantel can be the icing on the fireplace cake. In this English Tudor, we used a pair of bronzed geese placed carefully on the hearth. They create an interesting visual focal point when there’s no fire lit. The arch of their necks draws the eye upwards to a stunning piece of art, and the right flowers in the vase play homage to the vivid colors in the canvas. In this instance, the fireplace and mantel become a complete design package.

Monochromatic color. Consider using a monochromatic or restricted color palate for a subtle and classy alternative to a mantel that stands out. Choose accents, art, and accessories from the same color family, with maybe an object or two that pops out a bit more than the rest.

Prop rather than hang. If a formal living room isn’t your cup of tea, you can take the decor down just a notch by propping – rather than hanging – your art pieces and accents. I love the way this mantel looks with the layered art pieces, stacked books and arranged candles. It’s stylish and attractive, but everything about it says warm, homey and comfortable. This is a living room where all guests feel welcome.

Easy Dorm Room Decor Ideas

March 17, 2018

The first year your child moves into his or her own dorm room is a biggie. It’s like an emotional roller coaster for everyone; the highs a new adult learning to make his/her way in the world and the terrifying fears that can accompany that! Decorating a dorm room can make all the difference for both parents and their college freshman.

As a parent, you’ll be able to feel a part of things and your child will be able to combine his/her favorite things from home along with new decorations, bedding and accessories that will help them to claim their own space in the world, literally and figuratively.

Easy DIY Dorm Room Decor Ideas to Make the Space Their Own

What stays and what goes. The first step is to sit down and see what they’re taking and what they’re leaving. Are they bringing their favorite quilt that grandma made for them? If so, you can cross bedding off the list. Did they get a cool batik from a college-savvy cousin as a graduation present? Envision it on the wall and then select additional decorations and accents that will complement it.

What dimensions are you working with? Depending on where your child will be going to school, the dorms may be impressively sized (usually the case at older colleges) or more like a micro-housing unit (often the case in newer dorms). See if you can get the room’s dimensions ahead of time so you don’t over-buy.

Invest in an area rug. I highly suggest investing in an area rug. Dorm floors are usually covered with either industrial tile or a neutrally colored, flat berber carpet that does nothing to add to the room’s appeal. If you’re in contact with your future roommate, you might want to check in on style preferences to make sure the color or pattern will work for him/her too. Otherwise, buy a smaller size that can be used under a desk or peeking out from the bed to help hide the boring stuff.

Make a faux-headboard. You can make your own faux-headboard (or daybed-style side wall version) Using heavy cardboard or foam board, a little cotton batting and a glue gun. Cut it any shape you like and then choose an attractive fabric to cover it. This will hide boring wall space and add visual interest.

Accent pillows galore. It’s nearly impossible to have too many pillows because the dorm room bed serves as both your couch and hang out space. Buy a half a dozen pillows in different shapes and sizes. They’ll come in handy when two or three friends are hanging out and need a little extra back support against the wall.

Loft one or both beds if you can. Talk to the maintenance department to see if they have any extra bed frames laying around. Often, they’ll let you use one or two to loft the beds. You sleep on the top and gain the extra square footage below for your desk, a couch, fridge, storage containers, etc.

Use wall decals. While you can’t paint or do anything permanent to the blank dorm walls, you can use temporary wall decals that can be removed when you move out. There are all kinds of decals from maps and murals to fun shapes and designs. They’re unique, visually interesting and – if you’re careful when removing them – they can be re-used.

Creating The Perfect Gallery Wall

February 27, 2018

Adding a gallery wall to your home or office is a wonderful way to add interest, color, pattern and emotion. If you’re an art collector, it provides a way to highlight your collection; if you are a globe-trotter, it provides a way to display favorite scenes or memories from your travels. Many gallery walls combine art, photographs and mementos – however, there is a fine line between a well-executed display and one that comes off as a bit cluttered or messy.

Create a Gallery-Worthy Wall in Your Home or Office Space

The following tips will be helpful to keep in mind when assembling your own pieces and formatting the layout for a gallery wall.

Place the furniture first. One of the keys to preventing a cluttered look is to keep things in proportion. For this, you must have a clear understanding of the dimensions you’re working with, and that requires prior furniture placement so you know exactly how low or wide you can go with your pieces. Keep your wall gallery on hold until you are sure about your furniture placement, then you’ll be able to space and place your collection accordingly.
Pay attention to light. Natural light is gorgeous and a bonus to any interior design, however, it will take its toll on wall hangings, photographs and art. Pay attention to how the light spills into your room during the course of the day, and place the smallest groupings – and least important of your pieces – in areas that receive the most sunlight to reduce fading.
Hang the most important pieces first. Determine which of your pieces are the most important and hang those first. The rest of your collection and placement should be considered in relationship to your focal pieces. Your focal piece(s) should be the center of the display, everything else should move out from there.
Find a unifying theme. Perhaps it’s the frame, a specific color or symbol, or a particular genre of art – in most cases, an attractive gallery wall will have some type of unifying theme. If your art does not, consider using the same types of frames to avoid distraction. This being said, it’s a good idea to hang an atypical frame here and there, perhaps for your focal pieces, to avoid monotony.
You don’t have to measure exactly. Contrary to the mathematical formulas you may have found online, you don’t have to measure exactly. Quite the contrary. That being said, you should leave a few inches of white space between two frames to (you guessed it) prevent clutter, but also to provide each piece with a hint of independence.
You should think about a level. There is nothing more frustrating than unintentionally crooked lines. Do use a level to keep the pieces relative to one another and to spare your Type-A and decorator friends from the irrepressible urge to straighten something that can never be straightened without starting over from scratch.
Step back and view from different angles. As you go, do step back every few frames or so and walk to different areas of the room. This will help you determine if your plan is working out as you envisioned it, and will highlight any red flags so you can make changes before you’ve gone too far.
Don’t be afraid to layer or prop. Some of my favorite mantels and bookcase displays involve larger canvases that have another, smaller piece of art propped off-center on it’s surface. Simply propping a canvas against the wall adds a modern, avant-garde touch.

Learn About Home Lighting Design

February 26, 2018

Lighting is key to how our eyes perceive color, shape, contrast and details. It affects our moods as well as our abilities to focus or relax.

When I arrive at a consultation, my clients are all atwitter, ready to tell me about the amazing ideas they have for countertop and flooring options, cabinetry and wall colors. In the meantime, I’m shrewdly peering from room to room, figuring out how much natural light we have to work with, if there are ways to bring more natural light into the space, and how I can work to decrease the glare over here and increase lighting in that shadowy spot over there.

While it’s not often a client’s favorite thing to learn about, astute interior designers know that without a thoughtful lighting plan, all their hard work will fall flat – or will never be viewed in the way they envisioned it in their minds..

Steps to Create a Thoughtful Lighting Design

This is why it’s important that clients to understand a little bit about lighting before they move too far into their design choices. Some colors will work better than others, depending on the amount and quality of light in a living space at any given time.

Here are some of the steps involved with creating a thoughtful lighting plan that shows your future home renovation in its best (literal) light, while also providing the right amount of task and ambient lighting, and a balance of light and softened shadows.

Where Do You Need Light?

Have you ever thought about where you actually need light in your home? Probably not. You simply flip on a switch or move a lamp from here to there. An interior designer takes it a step or two further. We consider the orientation of your home and even the existing landscaping.

Where does light enter you home in the morning? What about at noon, or at dusk? Do evergreens keep light from entering your home in certain locations? Or do surrounding deciduous trees open a window for light during the darker months of the year? What does each room look like throughout the day when all the lights are switched off? Would your home benefit from skylights or solar tubes?

These are the types of questions we think about and answer in order to create a general lighting plan – subtracting or diminishing light where it isn’t needed and adding it where it’s lacking.

How Can We Optimize Light Quality or Quantity?

There are lots of ways to tackle this one. Of course, we use a balance of natural and artificial light. But, as you know, artificial lights are not created equal. The types of lights (LED, halogen, incandescent or CFL), the wattage and the use of a shade – or no shade/filter – makes a huge difference on the way our eyes perceive light. Ceiling height will affect the quality of overhead lighting and suspended light fixtures. Certain fixtures may have decorations that accentuate or inhibit the flow of light.

Speaking of flow of light, how does light move from one room to another? Apart from the type of light fixtures I recommend, I might also suggest a client use glass cabinet doors in the upper cabinets between the kitchen peninsula and the adjacent living space to maximize the flow of light. Or, we might decide on a different type of window treatment to enhance the quality of light that comes in to a particular room – you may want a different quality of natural light in the kitchen than you do in the bedroom, for example.

What Are Your Personal Lighting Needs?

Lighting needs for a young couple will be very different than the lighting needs for an elderly couple or family. I might install a different type of fixture in a corner used for reading or homework than I will in a corner that’s used for yoga or meditating. Then, there are accent lights to consider – those that have a fixture design that adds visual interest as well as those lights that are specifically directed to highlight a specific design feature.

A thoughtful lighting design will always take the home occupants’ needs into consideration, and will also include a plan for the future if necessary.

Choosing Lights That Fit the Design

Now that we have the plan’s foundation in place, it’s time to build it out with the right fixtures. Typically, this means a mix of recessed lighting and suspended fixtures, as well as table and floor lamps. Things like energy-efficiency are also important, especially if you are planning a sustainable home renovation. Ultimately, we want light to be balanced in terms of task, ambient and accent lighting, but we also need to ensure the fixtures we select are the right aesthetic fit for your home.

Work with an interior designer who understands the importance of lighting when it comes to showing an interior design to its optimum advantage. Get out of the shadows and glares, and learn to see your home in a new, improved light.

Decorating with Milk Glass

February 24, 2018

Have you every noticed that items that were once the property of “the common folk” wind up being trendy and highly sought after a generation or two later? Consider the price of an old farmhouse desk in an antique store and you’ll see what I mean. Another example of this would be Milk Glass.

Named for it’s white, milky color, milk glass was produced from about 1835 through the 1980’s. It was “porcelain for the masses” and allowed lower- and middle-class homes to enjoy similar aesthetics for their dishware and figurines as the upper-classes did via more luxurious options.

Milk Glass: Porcelain for the Masses

Of course, over time, milk glass has become a collectible and has made quite a comeback in the interior design world. You can find modern milk glass light fixtures and reproduction pieces from several manufacturers. Antique milk glass can run from a few dollars at a garage sale or flea market to thousands of dollars for rare and collectible pieces. If you don’t know your stuff, it’s easy to get ripped off.

Keep your eye out for the name Westmoreland Glass Company, which was one of the major producers of milk glass throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. However, many pieces lack any official manufacturer’s stamp so it can be difficult to know if a piece is truly antique or not. At one point, lead was used to produce milk glass, making the pieces ring like a bell when tapped.

Creative Ways to Decorate With Milk Glass

Of course, if it’s the look you want and the antique factor is less of an issue, you’ll be able to find affordable reproduction milk glass at big box stores like Ikea. Once you’ve started your collection, it’s time to get creative in how you display it.

In Groups. One of the most fun things about milk glass is all of the different shapes, designs and motifs that were used in its design. There are several different ways to organize your groups. You can use things that are the same, as in a grouping of milk glass bowls of different sizes or milk glass vases, etc. The continuity of the objects paired with the difference in patterns, textures or shapes is attractive. Or, you can do groupings of different milk glass objects, like a bowl, a few coffee cups and sweet milk glass figurines.

In an all-white design. Their fun textures and shapes, combined with the shiny white exterior makes them an excellent accessory for an all-white design.

Use them functionally. One of the best things about anything produced for “the masses” is its durability, and most milk glass is certainly that. You can use milk glass pitchers as vases or take a row of milk glass bowls or cups and plant them with bulbs or succulents. Milk glass looks gorgeous at night with the soft light of a candle glowing from within. If you have a few tea cups or bowls in your collection, try placing a votive or tea light inside and lighting it up. The bright white looks great with color so I also recommend using milk glass bowls or cake stands to display colorful seasonal fruit on a table.

Light fixtures. One of my favorite modern uses for milk glass is as a light fixture. Several manufacturers use milk glass for lighting fixtures of all types. They look especially good as a kitchen pendant because their vintage look works with any design style.